Recent Posts

Don’t assume that President Obama is terribly upset about the
misbehavior of his Secret Service protectors in Colombia. The
president now knows that a well-timed scandal can be a very
useful thing.

As Obama begins to gear up his re-election campaign in earnest –
a recent Rolling Stone
interview was titled “Ready for the Fight” – he’s reaching
out to young voters, one of the key blocs that put him in office
four years ago.

The president is much less keen to talk with young voters about
marijuana and his role as commander in chief in the war on drugs.

In the Rolling Stone interview, Obama told publisher Jann Wenner,
“What I specifically said was that we were not going to
prioritize prosecutions of persons who are using medical
marijuana. I never made a commitment that somehow we were going
to give carte blanche to large-scale producers and operators of
marijuana – and the reason is, because it’s against federal law.
I can’t nullify congressional law.” He confessed that a gray area
exists in the form of large-scale dispensaries that, he said,
“may supply medical marijuana users, but in some cases may also
be supplying recreational users.”

It isn’t only medical marijuana users, however, who feel left out
in the cold by the president’s position. While they, along with
some of Obama’s more liberal supporters, have said they feel betrayed by the
administration’s continued raids of dispensaries in states where
medical marijuana is legal, Latin American leaders are calling
for a new drug war strategy.

At the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Obama rejected legalization as an
answer to the trafficking that is spreading violence and
corruption on both sides of the border (though mostly outside the
United States). “I personally and my administration’s position is
that legalization is not the answer, that in fact if you think
about how it would end up operating, the capacity of a
large-scale drug trade to dominate certain countries, if they
were allowed to operate legally without any constraint could be
just as corrupting, if not more corrupting than the status quo,”
he said, according to the BBC.

The president’s argument is that if narcotics becomes just
another big Latin American business, like mining, coffee or
tourism, the industry will be “just as corrupting, if not more
corrupting” as the status quo, which currently leads to the
decimation of honest businesses, the murder of journalists, and
the buying or burying of prosecutors and judges.

Obama’s comment, divorced from reality, reflects an American drug
policy of “just say no, and spend more money on enforcement,”
which has accomplished nothing constructive in over four decades.
Drugs remain freely available in the U.S., while the drug war’s
costs to societies in producing and transit countries mount.

At the Cartagena conference, Guatemalan President Otto Perez
Molina called for “a responsible, serious dialogue in which we
scientifically analyse what is happening with the war on drugs.”
This is not a dialogue Obama wants to have, but he does not want
American voters to focus on his slavish devotion to failed
policies, either.

Enter the Secret Service scandal, which came along just in time
to push the drug issue out of the headlines.

By late last week, nine Secret Service members had resigned or been forced
out of the agency because of misconduct involving alleged
prostitutes. Two dozen people, half Secret Service members and
half military personnel, came under investigation in the scandal.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has called for an independent
review; Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., countered that such a demand
was purely political maneuvering.

The president did some maneuvering of his own. He was happy to
talk about the Secret Service in his Jimmy Fallon appearance, where, according to
CNN, Obama said that “99.9%” of Secret Service
agents do great work, and “[…] a couple of knuckleheads shouldn’t
detract from what they do.”

The president is not in any hurry to explain to college students
that he runs a drug lottery, which a huge percentage of them
play. In most cases, recreational marijuana usage won’t hurt
their careers or their futures. Occasionally, though, someone who
is in the wrong place at the wrong time will find his or her life
changed forever because of an arrest on a drug charge.

The hypocrisy is stunning. We have had three baby boomer
presidents, and though the last two have avoided getting caught
up in President Clinton’s rationalizations, we can safely assume
all three did, in fact, inhale. They all went on to preside over
drug policies that ruin other people’s lives for doing the same.

I’ve written before about the
reasons legalization is overdue. I’m still waiting for the
government to treat marijuana like milk,
whose producers insist they cannot survive without federal price
supports, or to acknowledge that cannabis does, in fact, have medical applications. In
the meantime, it is clear that prohibition isn’t working. Even
those who do not support total legalization are beginning to suggest more
sensible alternatives in the face of such obvious failure.

The president doesn’t want to talk to young voters about pot. A
fortuitously timed sex scandal means that, for now, he does not
have to.

For more articles on financial, business, and other topics,
view the Palisades Hudson newsletter, Sentinel, or subscribe to my daily opinion column,
Current Commentary.